The ‘Second Shift’ in Emergency Medicine: Strengths and Barriers of the Gendered Double Burden

Abstract

The ‘double burden’ (or ‘second shift’) describes the workload of people in paid employment who are also responsible for unpaid domestic work. Globally, most of this work is shouldered by women and is often undervalued. For women working in Emergency Medicine, the double burden is likely to have impacts on career progression and leadership opportunities, as well as present challenges around competing demands of a rotating roster and domestic labour. With a higher and earlier attrition rate from emergency medicine, the loss of female clinicians has enormous implications for the EM workforce. The double burden has often been viewed as a challenge and a barrier to women; however, employing a strengths-based lens reveals that the experience of the double burden may lead to more empathetic and inclusive leadership models with greater innovation and gender equity within emergency department teams.